The Beast Is an Animal

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  She walked over to Enid, held both of her chilled hands in her own. Enid was such a big girl, and Alys was such a little girl. And Alys could no longer bear to be the only person other than Pawl who was awake in this village. So she did the only thing she could think to do. She went searching for the jug of water that you could find in every kitchen, and she tossed it over Enid.

  The girl squealed and shook, and when Alys looked at her again her eyes were blue and not black and suddenly Alys felt less alone.

  Once Enid had wiped her eyes, she looked back at Alys as if she hadn’t seen her before. “My parents,” she said. “Where are they?”

  Enid’s parents were dead, same as Alys’s. And on and on it went, from house to house and all the same. No longer did Pawl bother knocking, he just walked through front doors and found them all. Children fifteen and younger all alive and sleeping deep. Parents, older siblings, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, grandfathers . . . dead. Emptied out. In one night, Gwenith had become a town of orphans and hollow shells.

  Enid left her sisters and brother sleeping and told Pawl that they must wake Madog. He was fifteen also and her intended. Once he was awakened, Madog left his own two sisters sleeping, and followed Pawl, Alys, and Enid to Alys’s kitchen. Pawl was quiet and so were they. Enid and Madog held hands, hard and frightened, the same way that Alys held Pawl’s.

  Alys finally knew real fear. She hadn’t thought she could be more frightened than when she’d seen Mam and Dad lying in their bed cold and gone. But she had grown more frightened as the morning wore on and the sun straight overhead made everything stark and bright. It was a comfort at first to have Enid awake, and then Madog, but now it disturbed her all the more how terrified they were. And Pawl, too.

  After Pawl sat them all down in Alys’s kitchen, he paced the room. He stomped across, stopped, looked up at the ceiling. Stomped back, shook his head. Finally he looked at them. “There’s only one thing for it. You must take care of each other while I go for help.”

  “Help?” Madog said. “Nearest help is Defaid, and that’s two days away.” Before today, Madog had looked like such a man to Alys, his chin already bristled with golden beard, and his arms and back were strong from farming. But he had a child’s eyes now. Round.

  “Ay, I know,” Pawl said. “But I’ve got just the one wagon and I can’t drag you lot of children on foot all the way there. I’d lose half of you. There must be fifty of you in this town, ay?”

  Madog didn’t answer, only nodded.

  “But what about the babies?” Enid said. “How will we take care of all of them? We’ve at least ten children under the age of two in town. And that’s not counting the little ones three, four, and five who’ll be running wild and scared without their parents.”

  Pawl scratched his red and white beard. “Ay, you’ve a point.” Then he brightened. “Don’t wake them.”

  “Don’t wake them?” Enid said. “But what if they wake on their own? And what if their first words are to ask where their mams and dads are? Or what if they’re crying for their milk and I have none?”

  “Child, I have none of the answers you’re looking for, but I will tell you this. You kids have been bewitched. I don’t think those babes are going to be waking up on their own. You just leave them be and hope for the best. This whole town”—he waved his hand in a circle in the air—“has had something evil happen to it. And the faster I can get you all out of here, the safer you’ll be. And the fastest way I can see to do that is me riding alone to Defaid and bringing back as many riders as I can for this lot of sleeping children.”

  Madog spoke up then. “What about the . . . the bodies.” He said it flatly, as if trying to pull away from his own words and what they meant.

  “Close the doors and leave them be,” Pawl said. “And hope the weather stays cool.” Then he found something to stare at on the floor.

  Alys looked back and forth between round-eyed Madog and white-faced Enid.

  Then she looked up at Pawl and made a quick calculation. “I’m going with you.”

  FOUR

  Pawl tried to talk her into staying with Enid and Madog, but Alys clung to him tightly, and she knew he didn’t have the heart to peel her away. So he told her to pack her clothes and be quick about it.

  It was early afternoon by the time they were off, and Pawl said he’d only stop to rest the horses as much as he had to, that they wouldn’t be lingering any longer than necessary. He said this while he looked into the deep fforest on either side of the road. Alys followed his eyes between and among the trees. She pulled herself tighter into Mam’s coat, which she’d grabbed from a hook in the kitchen at the very last moment. It smelled a bit like Mam, and a bit like breakfast.

  After a few hours he stopped to water the horses in a stream near the road. He dug into a sack and handed Alys some dried meat, cheese, and an apple. She sat on a rock and he sat on a stump, but soon he was up again, looking at her, looking into the fforest, looking back at her.

  He was frightened. Alys had forgotten about her own fear once they’d left the dead village behind them. It had been replaced with a heavy sort of something in her chest, like a rock she had to carry that was so dense it made her slow. But Pawl’s fear pricked her own, and she felt a tickle along her spine like the light stroke of a fingernail.

  Alys finished eating and rose from the rock and Pawl was already at the wagon waiting to lift her up. Then they were off again, and as the sun dimmed toward late afternoon, Pawl’s constant scanning, left and right and left again, gave him the look of a nervous bird. As if sensing how she looked at him, Pawl shook himself and smiled. “Nothing to fear, fair Alys. We’ll have you to Defaid soon enough, and safe and sound we’ll be.”

  Alys was old enough to know when an adult was trying to convince her of something he didn’t quite believe himself. “What’s out there in the fforest,” she said, “that you keep looking for?”

  Pawl regarded her, then lifted his eyes skyward, as if seeking help from a passing crow. Then he laughed, but without much mirth to it. “What do you think I’m looking for, child?” There was no sharpness to his question, just soft surrender. “I’ve never had a child of my own and like as not you’re too young to be telling this to, but your parents are dead and what I’m looking for out in those woods is what killed them. And I think you know that, Alys, because you’re a watchful little thing, always taking things in. You’ll do just fine in Defaid if you hold onto that and don’t let go. Just keep your eyes open and your mouth mostly shut, child. And no more talk of what’s in the fforest. That’s my best advice to you.” He nodded at her, then looked back at the horses and the road in front of them, as if all had been settled.

  “What’s in the fforest?”

  Pawl rolled his eyes up again. “And didn’t I just get done telling you, child, how there’s no good to come from talking about that?”

  “Ay, but we’re not in Defaid yet.”

  Pawl laughed in a short, shocked burst. “You are a cunning lass if ever I met one.” Then his face grew serious again. “Well I suppose I’d want to know myself if it were my parents.” He glanced at her as if measuring her for a new set of clothes. “Now mind you I don’t know for sure, because I’ve only heard tell. Stories, really, that’s all I’ve heard. But what I think done that to your parents and all the others . . . well, I think what done it to them is soul eaters.”

  Alys felt something clench inside of her when he spoke the last two words. Soul eaters. Because isn’t that how her parents had looked, as if their very souls had been eaten out of them? As if all that was left was all that you didn’t need? “What are they?” she said.

  Pawl shook his head. “There are so many stories. Stories older than me. The kind of stories you tell to keep young ones tucked in bed at night. My own mam and dad told them to me, and I expect their mams and dads did the same. Some say the soul eaters are demons. That The Beast made them out of mud and evil intent. That they snatch people’s souls and then bring
them back to The Beast to suffer for all eternity.”

  Alys thought of her dear mam and dad and the hollow shells that were left of them. She thought about all the good parts of them gone off somewhere terrible. Somewhere frightening and painful. She shivered in Mam’s coat. She wondered if Mam was cold without it. Were spirits cold? “You think that’s what happened to my parents? That soul eaters took them to The Beast?”

  Pawl jerked his head back toward her, opened his mouth and crunched up his face in a wince. “No, no, child. No such of a thing. Your parents are dead. Their suffering is over. I don’t believe in that nonsense. No more than I believe wolves opened up your barn doors.”

  “Well, what do you believe?”

  “Child, I believe in the ground under my feet and the sky over my head and that I get hungry before suppertime and sleepy before bed. All else are tales and nothing more.”

  Alys narrowed her eyes at Pawl. She’d never met an adult who claimed to know so little about so much. “But you believe in soul eaters. You said so.”

  Pawl paused, pondered his next words. “I’ll tell you the truth, Alys. Before today I doubted. But what happened to all those poor folks back in your village . . . well. That’s not natural. It weren’t illness nor wolves nor cold nor hunger that took them away in their beds.”

  For the first time since the night before, the memory of the girls that looked like trees came to Alys. She didn’t know how she could have forgotten them, and yet she had. She thought of what Pawl had said, that the soul eaters were demons made of mud and evil. She thought of the girls. Their mud-caked skin. Their leafy hair. And she wondered if she, like all the sleeping children back in Gwenith, had been bewitched somehow. “I think I saw them last night,” she said to Pawl. “The soul eaters.” Then Alys told Pawl about the girls, and what they’d said to her, and their beautiful names. Angelica. Benedicta.

  Pawl’s mouth dropped open as she talked, and then he pulled up on the reins so suddenly that Alys nearly fell to the floor of the wagon. He grasped her by the shoulders. “You must never, never tell anyone that story. You must promise me this, Alys. No one in Defaid must ever hear it. Do you understand me?”

  He looked so angry with her that Alys thought she might finally cry. She hadn’t cried yet, and as young as she was she knew that must be odd. Enid had cried. Even Madog had wiped tears from his eyes. But Alys hadn’t, not once. Now she thought she could, though. Because Mam and Dad were dead and she was with this strange man going to a strange town and he was suddenly mad at her for seeing something. And maybe this meant that Mam and Dad being dead was somehow her fault. Should she have known those women were bad? Should she have screamed? “I’m sorry” was all that Alys could say now. And then she burst into tears. She sobbed until her stomach hurt just as much as her heart.

  All the while she cried, Pawl held her to him, pulling her head to his chest and petting her hair, making soft shushing noises. Finally she quieted. “It’s I who should be sorry,” he said. “I’m not mad at you, child, and you’ve nothing to be sorry for. A terrible thing has happened to you, and I’m going to see that you’re taken care of. And in all of Byd, I don’t think there’s a better place for you than Defaid. At least you’ll have Enid and Madog and others that are familiar to you there. And them Defaiders. Well, they’ll be decent to you. But the thing you need to know about a Defaider is that they don’t like what’s different, and they don’t like what they don’t understand. And if they think . . . well, how do I put this? If they think you had some sort of contact with the soul eaters, they might turn it around on you somehow. See a taint on you. And I don’t want that to happen to you, child. So you must trust me, and keep your story between us. I’ll take it to my grave and you do the same. Agreed?”

  Alys nodded into his chest. She was only seven, but she knew what Pawl meant by a taint. She remembered well enough the High Elder’s sermons about The Beast and how It found those given to temptation, and how It led them astray. And once you had the mark of The Beast on you, there was no erasing it. You were claimed. She wondered what the mark of The Beast looked like.

  Pawl let her go, and Alys immediately missed his arms around her. She straightened up on the seat next to him, and they rode quietly on.

  They rode all night. Pawl urged Alys to sleep in the caravan but she refused, insisted she could stay awake with him. Yet sleep she did, and when she woke up she was curled at his feet like a dog, and the sky was pink and dawning.

  Pawl told Alys that he would take her to the High Elder of Defaid, tell him all that had happened, and then the High Elder would surely send riders and wagons out for the rest of the children. As they passed through the outlying farms of Defaid, Alys noticed their neatness and their sameness. Their whitewashes and stone fences. This was the farthest she’d ever been from home, but she found it looked no different. The only difference was that these folks still had their animals. And the children had parents. And there was noise, so much sound compared to the sudden silence of Gwenith.

  The houses were close together now, which meant they were in the main part of the village, where the tradespeople and craftsmen had their homes and shops. There was a schoolhouse, bigger than the one in Gwenith, and a large whitewashed meetinghouse with broad double doors. Alys took these things in, but what she mostly noticed were all the eyes on her. Every villager seemed to follow her and Pawl with their gaze—man or woman or child, they all stared, unsmiling. Alys felt sick. The sour remains of her last meal rose in the back of her throat.

  She tugged on Pawl’s sleeve as he stopped in front of the meetinghouse. “Maybe,” she said, her voice dry and whispery in her mouth, “I could go with you to the Lakes?”

  But Pawl didn’t hear her. He was already down from the wagon and tying up the horses. And Alys couldn’t bear to repeat the question for fear he’d say no. He reached up to her and lifted her down, and Alys felt unsteady on her feet, unused to solid ground after so long swaying with the wagon.

  Alys became even more conscious of eyes all around them, and then men gathering, big men in black robes with white collars and hats. They were Elders, just like the Elders back in Gwenith, only somehow bigger and blacker and whiter. And then Pawl was telling them what had happened and voices were raised and she and Pawl were swept through the doors of the meetinghouse. Then a woman came in wearing a black dress and a starched white apron and she took Alys by the hand and drew her away from Pawl. Alys reached out for him, but he smiled at her, and said, “Go with Mistress Ffagan, child, and I’ll come find you later.”

  So Alys did. She went with the strange woman who held her by the hand and took her to another strange woman who lived on the far side of town, in a stone house that bordered a wide field and had the biggest tree that Alys had ever seen behind it.

  Alys was seated at the strange woman’s kitchen table and given a glass of milk, and bread with butter and honey. The sight of it made Alys sick again, but she tried to sip and eat, because Mam had always told her to eat what she was given.

  While Alys chewed and swallowed, the women went through a doorway into a small adjoining room, and there they whispered and looked back at Alys every so often. Then they came out again.

  Mistress Ffagan had a round face dotted with two round brown eyes, a snub nose, and a mouth that seemed too small. Alys did not like her. The other woman, the woman who lived there, was thin and sharp-nosed with dark brown hair pulled flat against her head. She had no soft parts, not like Mam.

  “I’m Mistress Argyll,” the sharp-nosed woman said to her. “And this is where you’ll be living from now on.” She looked Alys over, as if she were expecting to find something that wasn’t there. “Have you brought no clothes with you?”

  “Ay, I have,” she said. “They’re with Pawl.”

  Mistress Argyll looked at Mistress Ffagan. “The traveler who brought her here,” Mistress Ffagan said. “That’s who she means.” Then Mistress Ffagan looked at Alys. “He’ll bring them here before he leaves. I
’ll go see to that now.”

  Alys followed Mistress Ffagan with her eyes, and thought about correcting her mistake. Alys might have informed her that in fact Alys was not staying here, that she was going with Pawl to the Lakes. But there was no point in that, Alys knew. She could see that Mistress Ffagan was not a woman who would let a child tell her what she wanted. So instead Alys waited for Pawl to come for her.

  Mistress Argyll sat down across from Alys. “Your color’s good,” she said.

  “My color?”

  “Your skin, child. You don’t look sick. That’s why you were brought to me, especially. I’m a healer, a midwife. You have them in Gwenith, don’t you?”

  Alys nodded. “I’m not sick.”

  “I know you’re not, I can see that well enough.” The woman looked off to the side, and Alys sensed she didn’t like looking at Alys straight on. “You should eat then. Since you’re not sick.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alys said. “I don’t much feel like eating.”

  “No,” Mistress Argyll said, glancing back at Alys. This time her eyes made it all the way to Alys’s face. “I expect not.” Alys felt relief the moment the woman turned away from her again.

  The kitchen was quiet while Alys sat there with Mistress Argyll, but the sounds of the village of Defaid rose all around them outside. Through all the other noises, Alys made out the tread and roll of Pawl’s wagon wheels. She stood up from the table, pushed back her chair. “Thank you for the food, Mistress Argyll.” Then she turned and left through the front door.

  Pawl came to a stop and hopped down. He reached into the wagon and dropped Alys’s bags at her feet. He lifted his hat and tipped it at Mistress Argyll, who had walked up behind Alys. “May I bring these inside for you, Mistress?”

  “No need,” she said. “My husband will do it. He’s in the wood shop now, but when he comes home he’ll see to them.”

  Pawl dropped his hat back on his head, smiled, and reached for the bags anyway. “Oh but it’s no trouble, let me just do this one thing for you and the lass.”